John O'Sullivanreports on changes to the prestigious Sawgrass which hosts what many regard as the 'fifth major' this weekend

This week professional golf's elite decamp to Florida to tee it up in The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, a tournament and venue that has undergone significant alterations since last year's staging and an event that carries the sobriquet of the "fifth major". While those that administer the tournament at US PGA Tour headquarters are reluctant to officially court the label of "fifth major", there can be no doubting its pedigree, especially following its new date this year in the playing schedule.

It has always been played in March and as a result viewed as a tune-up tournament for the US Masters at Augusta in April but on being moved to May is now ensconced in its own little niche and will further enhance the case for those who champion its case for "fifth major" status.

The Masters heralds the start of the majors in April, The Players takes place in May, the US Open in June, The British Open in July and the US PGA Championship in August: there's a nice symmetry there.

Brian Goin, executive director of The Players, tried to downplay the debate on one hand while simply reinforcing the obvious quality of the tournament. "The major status, I don't know where you can go with that, to be honest. Probably we are a major championship just because of what the event is and who we are. However, I just don't see it really ever becoming a major and the reason I say that is because of history and tradition. Right now you have Tiger Woods chasing Jack Nicklaus and he played in four majors every year. If you start letting Tiger play for five majors every year then the records wouldn't work.

"I think that what has to happen is that we've just got to continue to stage the best event. Whether we're a major or not, because it depends on who you talk to, I think that the event stands on its own. Maybe it doesn't have a major title but they know they've probably done better than if they'd won the Masters because they're beating 144 of the best guys out there.

"At Augusta this year they might have 65 guys that realistically have a chance of winning that tournament. At The Players all of them here could win it."

Goin alighted on the change of date as the catalyst for reinforcing the cachet of the championship. "The biggest thing that we've done, in my opinion, has been in moving the date. If we'd had played this event in March, all we'd have been hearing is how this event was a tune-up for the Masters. What we've been able to do is get away from that."

In previous years on the March date the tournament has competed for newspaper headlines with Collegiate basketball's Final Four tournament. Wood's victory at Doral last month didn't make the front pages of the sports sections.

TPC Sawgrass has undergone significant changes - not in respect of the intrinsic characteristics of Pete Dye's layout - a seven-month transformation that saw the swamp-based land dredged, drained and reseeded, encompassing tee boxes, fairways and greens. The reconstruction involved removing six to 12 inches of muck and taking it away in trucks, that if parked in a line would have stretched for seven miles.

TPC Sawgrass general manager Bill Hughes gave an overview on the alterations, that saw the course closed one week after last year's tournament and reopened in November. "As you know, the facility opened in 1980 and I like to use the terminology that it's the most democratic golf course ever designed. That was by intent. When the Tour approved the building of this golf course there was a lot of pressure from the players that it should favour the best players in the world rather than favour all golfers.

"Pete Dye sat down with Dean Beaman, the commissioner at the time, who asked of Dye: 'I want to design a golf course that favours no playing style, that favours no player.' You'll have noticed there are short, medium and long par threes, par fours and par fives. No two holes ever play in the same direction following each other.

"There's always a change in direction so that the wind will have a different effect from hole to hole. The first and second hole and 10 and 11 are mirror images - dogleg right, dogleg left. When you play a tournament you start on one and you start on 10, and here it's a fair start on both sides, although flipped.

"What's happened in the last six, seven or eight years with technology, the changes in the golf club, the type of ball, the type of cover, the distances that the balls are flying - this ended up being the second shortest golf course on tour. They didn't want to add length for the purpose of adding length. They wanted to add length to this golf course to bring back the integrity in which it was originally designed.

"It's been proven over 25 Players Championships that long hitters - Woods, Fred Couples, multiple winners and short hitters, Fred Funk, can win, so it favours no type of golfer. We've only added about 140 yards to the length of this golf course with this renovation.

"We did it on six holes and a good example is the first. We have a stadium type U-shaped mounding and they blew out the back for two reasons. One to add some distance, and two to give it a look when you pull up to the main clubhouse and you look right down number one fairway, it's open and you can see the whole hole.

"The real purpose strategically was the longer players were getting an advantage on the first hole because if you look down the right side you have the water, a bunker at the end and grass moguls. The really long players, five or 10 per cent of the field, could blow it over everything and then hit a little flip wedge to a green that opened up perfectly to that shot. The design intent was that you went down the left side, had a longer iron and the difficulty of an angled green to hit at, so that's an example of where the yardage was added."

While the layout underwent a little nick and tuck, the full blow surgery took place underground. Hughes explained: "We went from the March date to a May date, which has allowed us to back to an un-overseeded golf course and to the way the golf course is really designed.

"When they designed it, they thought it would stay a Bermuda (grass) golf course, even though they were going to play it in March. But they wanted to go firm and fast so for every fairway they came and they took off at least six inches of organics off the top, went down another six inches and put in all new drainage, filled them in with sand and then sand-capped another six inches of every single fairway.

"We sodded the fairways to stay ahead of the game and they drain just unbelievably now. They came in and the GPSed all of the greens. They brought in this unit on wheels, almost like a golf cart and walked back and forth and they were able to read the greens and get a stamp.

"They came in about five feet on centre and drilled stakes into the green and painted at the edges, stripped and they went down 12 inches and rebuilt to USGA specs. Then by triangulating to the stakes they filled it back up to the four corners and feathered between those four corners to get back to within an eighth of an inch of the original grade on all the greens.

"They've gone to a faster Bent grass called Mini Verde. Because it's faster they didn't want it to be 'goofy golf'. If you got on the upper slope and the pin's on the lower slope they wanted you to have a difficult putt but not an unfair putt. So we did that on the fourth green and on the 13th green and they changed it just a little bit on 17."

The reason for change was primarily down to making the golf course uniform in terms of bounce. Before a golfer could hit a drive and land on some muck that would cling to his ball and there'd be no release on landing whereas another drive landing five feet away would release 20 yards. If it was a "wet tournament" the stroke average would be five shots lower.

They also consulted with players like Jim Furyk, who practises at The Players Stadium course. He pointed out that the rough in the collection areas around the greens led to the ubiquitous flop shot, which was in every player's armoury and required little imagination.

Hughes elaborated: "So now the collection areas really extend out from the greens and the rough lines tend to be on the up-slopes, so that the ball can roll and settle and can go a long ways before it gets in rough. So now you've got different shots.

"If you've got confidence in that 60-degree wedge you can go ahead and try to spin it or you can do a bump and run or you can take out your putter or your three-wood or utility and kind of roll it up and stuff.

"The intent was to make it more difficult in the sense of more creativity. The Florida Golf Association re-rated our golf course. The USGA has slope ratings and the maximum slope rating is 155. We only added 140 yards but the slope went from 147 to the maximum 155. They won't tell if you went higher. Hopefully, again, it will reward the best player that week who we feel will make the best decisions and has the greatest depth to his game."

A SubAir system - the exact same was installed at Augusta a few years ago - was introduced and allows for two different things. It's possible to blow air, warmth in, to keep the roots and the greens warmer during the winter months but you can also turn the air around and dry it out almost like a vacuum, pull the water down and through. The greens will be harder and faster."

The course alterations cost $10 million while a further $35 million was spent on a new 77,000 square foot, Mediterranean-style clubhouse. The tournament is hoping to welcome an additional 10,000 spectators per day, increasing the daily attendance to 45,000.

The Irish link to the Florida venue extends beyond Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke who tee it up on Thursday. Last year Irish investment company Redquartz Boundary (RQB) bought the on-site hotel, the Sawgrass Marriott Resort & Spa for $200 million.

The hotel controls 85 per cent of the tee-times for the Stadium and Dye's Valley courses. The company spent $10 million dollars in renovating the 500 bedrooms to a very high standard. The quality of the accommodation and food is top notch as is the luxury spa, while there is also access to a private beach club on the Atlantic Ocean.

The foyer area of the hotel lacks a focal point, a cavernous open plan expanse while the Champs bar, is like revisiting the set of Magnum PI, complete with the day-glo Hawaiian shirts - that's the customers - that augment the fluorescent lighting. A facelift is planned to address the latter issues; that's the building not the customers.

There are outstanding value packages available, an example of which is a five-night, four-round, four flights (Dublin to Jacksonville, via JFK in New York) for less than 1,500 depending on the time of year. Carr Golf in Dublin can help direct those who are interested.

The Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass is a real treat for any golfers, the 17th hole, just the great, big, fat cherry on top.